


And What Came Before, Won't Count Anymore

by showmethelions (sightandsound3733)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/M, Flashbacks, M/M, Pining, Song Lyrics, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Walking In On Someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 11:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12108162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sightandsound3733/pseuds/showmethelions
Summary: Her voice is the only one he hears, speaking low and steady. Talking to herself, he muses, a smile twitching at his lips. Working her way through a project probably. A Holt trait for sure, something they both picked up from their Dad. On the days it was hard to recognize the girl he grew up with from the warrior she’d become, this was always a comfort.Matt shoves his hands in his pockets, and heads for the room without hesitation. He was usually a welcome visitor on her sleepless nights, another brain to bounce things off, a familiar and well missed warmth at her side. The closer he gets, the easier it is to pick up on what she’s saying, and it’s clear enough when he can see the dim glow of light spilling into the hallways from the open doorway that she’s not talking to herself at all.She’s singing





	And What Came Before, Won't Count Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> All characters featured here are 18+.
> 
> Song used: "Only Us" from Dear Evan Hansen.

Matt finds himself spending a lot of time walking the halls of castle late at night. He’s always been a light sleeper, even back way before Kerberos. Back then it was simple insomnia, and restless, racing mind, thoughts outpacing his ability to process and settle them all at once. It was harmless then. Now his sleeplessness comes on the heels of nightmares, and he’s not fast enough to even try outrunning them all.  
  
He knows he’s not alone with this. Shiro and his dad both struggle with nightmares of their own, Shiro’s especially dark in a way Matt’s can’t begin to touch, filled with pain, anguish. The scars that mark his body can’t begin to compare to the ones that linger on his mind.

It used to be easier to sleep when they were still in the prison camps. With he and his father both exhausted after working long hours, it made it easier to conk out and grab even just a few consecutive hours of sleep. Being on the castleship, being safe and free to tinker in his sister’s lab or work on readings and minor technical repairs around the place, was barely enough to inspire a yawn.

So he took to walking.

Matt knows Shiro likes to patrol, likes to run his little head counts, keep his ducklings all in a line when he paces through the halls. He’s caught him a few dozen times, trading barely more than a knowing smile, while getting a small, sheepish one in return. It never fails to spark that old giddy lightness in his heart, a crush long since tended and long since leashed.  
  
He couldn’t help it. It was Shiro. Matt had always been a little bit in love with him. This shared thing between them definitely didn’t help.

Sometimes they’ll walk together, find a place to talk, their voices pitched low, leaning together to make it easier to hear. Shiro’s soft laughter, the warm, steady cadence of his voice in the starlit silence, the curve of his smile and liquid fondness in his eyes. Matt could honestly swoon just thinking about it.  
  
It didn’t always happen, but it was familiar enough of an occurence that Matt finds himself expecting Shiro pacing, exhausted but determined, around the bend of the hallway up ahead that leads from the paladins’ quarters.

Now that’s not to say Shiro’s the only one. More than once Matt’s walked past the training deck and caught sight of Keith kicking the crap out of a training bot (or getting it kicked out of him, it really depends on the night), and he’s even run into Coran once or twice.

But he’s never run into his sister before.

Matt quirks a brow when he can hear her voice as he’s about to round a corner, the one that’ll bring him to the common room with the biggest windows and the best view of the stars. Katie—Pidge, Matt’s still working on that one--, was usually in her lab, either awake or passed out cold on her work table. On nights when Matt comes across her he’ll poke her awake and prod her along to bed, reveling in how soft and sweet and _young_ she is when her mind is heavy with sleep.

Her voice is the only one he hears, speaking low and steady. _Talking to herself_ , he muses, a smile twitching at his lips. Working her way through a project probably. A Holt trait for sure, something they both picked up from their Dad.

On the days it was hard to recognize the girl he grew up with from the warrior she’d become, this was always a comfort.  
  
Matt shoves his hands in his pockets, and heads for the room without hesitation. He was usually a welcome visitor on her sleepless nights, another brain to bounce things off, a familiar and well missed warmth at her side. 

The closer he gets, the easier it is to pick up on what she’s saying, and it’s clear enough when he can see the dim glow of light spilling into the hallways from the open doorway that she’s not talking to herself at all.

She’s singing.

Surprise washes over Matt, stalling him in his path. It’s not often that Pidge sings. Hums under her breath while she’s working? Sure. Blandly quotes songs with the most deadpan monotone, amusing Lance and Hunk, confusing Keith and sometimes Shiro? Absolutely. But actually singing?

It had been a very long time since he heard her do that… 

_…Earth. They were on earth and she’s in the kitchen with Mom, helping out with the last family dinner they’d all have together. He’d been long since shooed away from helping, having the hot water boil over onto the stovetop because he’d gotten distracted, but his ban seemed to extend only to the doorframe._

_Katie wrinkled her nose as Mom started the song over again, the sappy one that she put on from that one old musical she likes so much, clipping her long hair up in a bun. “Come on Kitten,” their mother smiled warmly at her, waving the ladle she had in her hand in front of Katie’s face, doubling its purpose to include a makeshift microphone. “Sing with me!”_

_“Mom,” Katie complained, even as her lips twitch up in a smile at the ridiculous behavior. “Does it have to be this one? There are other songs that are good from the musical. There are other songs in general.”_

_“I am the birthgiver, and that means I pick the kitchen tunes. So yes, it has to be this one,” Mom laughed, gently bopping Katie on the nose with the ladle turned mic. Matt snickered at the face she made, and grins at the glare he got in return for it._

_“Come on Katie-Cat,” he’d teased. “Be a songbird for a minute. Tweet tweet.”_

_“They’re letting you in space tomorrow. How?” Katie stuck her tongue out at him, which Matt happily reciprocated. Katie rolled her eyes, but she’s listening to the song, trying to find the place she’s most comfortable, and they all know it’ll be the chorus, it’s always the chorus that she picks. It’s the prettiest part in her opinion and when she sings it, Matt has to agree._

_“ **So what if it’s us? What if it’s us, and only us?** ” Katie started, soft, barely heard over the song at first, only getting louder when Mom joins in, their voices melting together in a sweet harmony. “ **And what came before won't count anymore or matter. Can we try that?** “ Matt closed his eyes and just listened. He’d miss this, moments like this, more than anything else._

_“ **What if it’s you, what if it’s me, and what if that’s all that we need it to be?”** Katie’s voice cracked on the higher note, it always did, and she laughs to cover her embarrassment at it, leaving only Mom’s voice left to continue, sweet and syrupy like honey; “ **And the rest of the world falls away** \--”_

“—So what do you say?”

Matt blinks, stumbling to a stop and yanked from his memory, just paces from the doorway now. Pidge’s voice is clear as a bell, lovely, warm, and so _so_ sad. Matt’s heart gives the worst kind of ache because it’s _that_ song, the one from the musical, his memory, their mother’s song, and she’s singing it just like how he remembers she did, back when things were simple and they were safe and young and whole.

He swallows against the sudden lump in his throat, fights against the burn of tears and he takes the last few steps forward, propelled onward by Pidge’s melody.

The long couch in the room has been pushed to face the bay window, the lights mostly left off or dimmed to the lowest setting. He can see her curled into one corner, the wild mess of her hair the only thing he can clearly make out with her back to the door. It’s all too perfect, her silhouette picturesque against the wide stretch of a starlight speckled sky, impossibly bright and clear, and her voice rings in the emptiness of the room. 

 _“It’s not so impossible,”_ she sings, tempo off from how he remembers it should go, no music to guide her, but it really doesn’t matter. _“Nobody else but the two of us here. Cause you’re saying it’s possible… we can just watch the whole world disappear…”_

Matt closes his eyes tight, catching his weight with a hand on the door frame, knees gone a bit wobbly at the soft, soothing sound of his sister’s voice. How was it that it too had changed?  
  
Pidge always had a pretty voice, could sing a damn sight better than he ever could, but it was never this steady, this even. Higher notes always scared her away, sent her trailing off with a laugh, made her drop her gaze, and she’d always been more than happy to let Mom come in with her honey and fill in the gaps of any song she couldn’t quite grasp on her own.

But now?

Every note rings clear, every word crisp and easy without being sharp. She’d sung this enough to be comfortable with every part of the song, to become more comfortable with her voice, with the emotions that drive the song and Matt had missed it. Had missed it like he had so many things and Pidge--

She’s stopped singing now. The sudden silence jars Matt’s attention, snaps his eyes open the moment a pause rings too long.

“Hey,” She says after a moment of ringing quiet. He thinks for a minute she’s caught him watching. Heat springs to his cheeks and words rush to the tip of his tongue in explanation and apology, maybe a tease to lighten the melancholy of fondness in his chest, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking down on the couch, shifting a bit to the side, like she’s making room for someone else. She smiles, tender and gentle, and Matt realizes that she was singing _to_ someone, singing their mother’s love song. Immediately he wonders who, which of the Paladins had earned that sweet and sacred thing?  
  
She was close with them all, they all were close with each other as redundant as that is to say. The bonds they’ve built from countless battles, the strength they hold in each other, in the lions and out, it could really be any of them. Hunk, Lance, Keith, Matt is almost prepared to see any of their heads pop up from the couch… and it’s Shiro who sits up to be at her side.

Matt’s heart stutters to a stop.

“Hey,” Shiro’s low rumble sends a shiver down his spine. “You didn’t have to stop.” His voice is rough with sleep, sounding like each individual syllable is being manually pulled into existence.

“You know how the rest goes,” Pidge laughs, shifting again on the couch, up a little higher, so she’s resting on her knees. She’s not wearing her glasses--his old glasses, whatever-- and Matt can see her eyes sparkling from here. “Don’t need me to sing it for you.”

“I like when you sing it.” Shiro smiles, endlessly warm and fond. It’s small, and simple, it shouldn’t be as devastating as it is, but it’s the kind of smile that fills you up with liquid gold, the kind that seeps warmth into every crack and space between your joints, lifting you off your feet.

“You feeling any better?” She reaches out with a gentle hand to touch his cheek. Shiro’s eyes slip closed and he leans into the touch all too willingly, the movement more of an instinctual reaction to her than anything he seemed conscious of doing. Pidge’s smile goes fond and small, completely and wholly endeared. Matt can’t breathe.

“Much,” Shiro breathes out, his eyes blinking opening again to meet her own. “I’m sorry for keeping you up.”

“You aren’t keeping me up, I was already awake.” Katie rolls her eyes, tugging gently on the white shock of his bangs. “You found me in Green’s hangar, remember?”

“I shouldn’t be bothering you like this,” Shiro catches her hand, pressing a sweet kiss to her palm, even as his gaze falls away from her own, while Matt’s stomach twists itself in knots. “You need your sleep Pidge, and I shouldn’t be asking you to sit with me like this because I can’t handle-”

“Hey.” Pidge frowns, moving closer to him, eliminating all but a centimeter’s distance between them. Starlight frames them like a halo, throwing their profiles into a mirage of sharp clarity. Matt curls his hand tighter on the doorframe. “Stop that, don’t do that. Look at me, Takashi.”

Oh, she’d used his name. Oh oh oh…

Shiro does as he’s told, meeting her eyes, sharply bright and beautiful in the starlight, Matt gets to track the moment that he’s visibly stunned by her, his lips parting just a bit when she smiles.

Pidge twists her hand in his, threading their fingers. “How many times have you done something like this for me?” she asks softly, thumb tracing along the outside of his hand. “How many times have I needed you to hold me until I fell asleep because I was afraid of what my dreams were gonna be? How many times have I needed you to hum until I could calm down enough to function?

She curls her free hand around the back of Shiro’s neck, gently pulling him in. He goes all too willingly, eyes closing again as she presses their foreheads together. The trust in the gesture nearly sends Matt on his ass.

“You looking for an actual number?” Shiro asks, a soft chuckle falling from his lips into the barely there space between them.

“Don’t get cute with me,” Pidge warns, laughing herself. “I’m serious. I like doing this stuff for you. It’s part of the whole ‘loving you’ thing I’ve got going for me.”

Shiro absolutely lights up, his smile spreading on his lips, eyes crinkling up, and Matt’s heart aches, every beat painful now as he watches, frozen to the spot while Shiro slips gentle fingers into his sister’s hair. _Loving you_...

“I love you too,” his whisper ringa clear and Katie glows, completely and totally smitten. It's comfortable. Something he’s said before. “I do. I- The rest of the world falls away with you, Katie.”

 “Smooth,” Pidge giggles, soft and girlish like she never is, blissfully unaware how the same liquid gold that’s lighting her up inside has turned to lead in Matt, kept him stuck to the spot, helpless to do anything but watch them. “Using lyrics to your advantage. Nicely done.”

 “You’re a lot smarter than I am.” Shiro’s thumb traces along the curve of her jaw, handling her like glass. “I’ve got to use what charms I have at my disposal to keep up.” And then he’s leaning in and Matt needs to _go_. He’s going to be sick, he needs to leave before they can hear the neat shatter of his heart splitting in fucking two.  
  
Shiro gets as close as he can, barely a breath apart from her lips, Pidge is waiting for what comes next, the way her eyes flutter closed and her lips part for him, and he fucking sings, “ _It'll be us...and only us_ …” before he kisses her.  
  
Pidge falls into the kiss with a soft, wanting sigh that Matt can’t hear over the pound of his heart and he’s stumbling away, unable to stand it any longer, seconds from falling to actual pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> I broke Pidge in the last fic I wrote... so why not break Matt this time? 
> 
> Come say hi over on tumblr! showmethelions.tumblr.com


End file.
